Grotesque Ambivalence : : Melancholy and Mourning in the Prose Work of Albert Drach / / Mary Cosgrove.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter DGBA Backlist Complete English Language 2000-2014 PART1
• VerfasserIn: Cosgrove, Mary,
• Place / Publishing House: Tübingen : : Max Niemeyer Verlag, , [2012]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Edition: Reprint 2012
• Language: English
• Series: Conditio Judaica : Studien und Quellen zur deutsch-jüdischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte , 49
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (230 p.)

Die erste englischsprachige Untersuchung der Prosa von Albert Drach (1902-1995) arbeitet die Originalität von Drachs Autobiografie im Kontext gegenwärtiger Holocaust-Diskurse heraus. Dabei geht es um das Verhältnis zwischen Drachs komisch-grotesker Sprache und dem melancholischen Darstellungsmodus in der Holocaust-Autobiografie. Drachs Prosa legt die totalitären Mechanismen seiner Zeit zugleich leidenschaftlich und kritisch bloß.

The focus of this volume is the prose work of the Austrian-Jewish writer Albert Drach (1902-1995). The author explores Drach's critique of totalitarian culture by examining his representations of power and powerlessness, identity and difference, along with cultural processes of exclusion. Drawing on areas as diverse as psychoanalysis, the grotesque and post-colonial theory, this study identifies a significant discursive difference between Drach's shorter fictional prose and the Holocaust trilogy. Drach's highly original linguistic dexterity, his much-discussed 'protocol style', offers a sophisticated critique of the relationship between power, insubordination and capitulation. This is the first English language study dedicated to the complex prose of Albert Drach. It is of interest to students and scholars of Austrian literature, German-Jewish literature as well as Exile and Holocaust Studies.

Table of Contents

i-iv -- Content -- Chapter 1. Introduction -- Chapter 2. The Grotesque: Topography of Transgression, Morphology of Emptiness -- Chapter 3. Grotesque Discourses: Mourning and Melancholia -- Chapter 4. Floating Documents -- Chapter 5. Ex-centrics, Evil Eyes and Missing Persons: The Optics of Mimicry in Das Goggelbuch -- Chapter 6. »Z. Z.« das ist die Zwischenzeit: Paralysis of the Powerless -- Chapter 7. The Time of Evil Children -- Conclusion Concentration Camps of the Mind and the Child in Flight -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgements